University of Hong Kong, 5:02PM – Sunny.
Entry 76
I am sitting in the university library making a list of school bullies encountered over the years. It is for a project I am working on.
Project, here, is not a euphemism.
In my notebook, I write down each bully’s name and things I remember about them. Broken homes emerge, enough to line a street. No wonder, I think. It must have been what the adults were thinking too. No wonder.
How awkward it must have been, then, to confront the parents of these kids. The jilted conversations in the parking lot, in the pickup and drop-off lines, hidden between SUVs, coffee in paper cups, cooling in cup-holders. The world of adults. The world of action. Mothers first in the firing line, fathers in reserve, called in later, if it was that bad, if you were so lucky. And the excuses made. These must have been good. Whatever the case, the message would have been loud and clear: You’re messing up. Your life choices are causing your children to act out, to hurt other children. You are bad. This is bad. Why are you so bad? Why can’t you get it together? How awkward it must have been, then, for parents at a religious school where things are supposed to be backed by higher purpose. If you are a serious subscriber, serious enough to pay tuition fees, then you probably opt to forgive and hedge with prayers that they won’t be back the next year.
Hong Kong is a high school class about to graduate. We will never be all together in the same place ever again. Each day I bump into someone who says they are leaving. I am now one of those people too. I am going somewhere, but my project is not. Really, I thought digging up some things about the past would help my project. Really, I have a headache from the air-conditioning in the library. On top of that, a small dissatisfaction that none of the bullies come up when I search them on social media. But it is sunny now, there is that. It is somehow fitting.